Odds were stacked against me, the Mooch says

In his first television interview since being sacked, Anthony Scaramucci reflects on his 10 days in the White House and why he failed.

The Mooch says he saw himself like The Wolf, but he couldn’t clean up the mess at the White House.

Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, tried to set the record straight on ABC’s This Week, in his first interview after quickly losing his job for dissing his White House colleagues profanely — and openly — to a reporter with a tape recorder.

“The odds were stacked against me in the job,” Mr Scaramucci said. “And so, there were leaks and there was a repetitive process to try to dislodge me. I made an unforced error. That made it easy to dismiss me.”

The colourful former Wall Street financier, who calls himself the Mooch, says he pictured himself like the character Winston Wolf in the film Pulp Fiction — the clean-up-the-mess guy, who provides a variety of services, including getting rid of corpses.

“I really did get a directive from the president,’’ Mr Scaramucci explained. “I had a mutual understanding with him. And I was probably running too hard and acting more like a corporate CEO than I was, say, a political operative, and that is my mistake. And I have to own that.” Mr Scaramucci was fired as White House communications director just 10 days after his appointment.

Scaramucci on his comments that he would fire leakers: "I was hoping that it would set a reset of the culture." https://t.co/87GaeiHdDf pic.twitter.com/qLZVXMkNN7

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 13, 2017

In response to questioning from George Stephanopoulos, Mr Scaramucci backed off some claims he made in the ill-fated talk with New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza. In that interview he said he had obtained “digital fingerprints” from the Federal Bureau of Investigation of administration officials who had leaked to the press.

Not so, Mr Scaramucci says now. “That was totally misconstrued,” he said. “I was just implying that, at some point, the Department of Justice would be able to figure out who the leakers are inside the national security system.”

Mr Scarammucci said he thought his conversation with Lizza was off-the-record, though he acknowledged that he didn’t ask the reporter for those ground rules. He said that based on their “prior relationship, ” the conversation should have been considered off-the-record. “I made a mistake,” he said. “I’m accountable for the mistake.”

Fundamentally, Mr Scaramucci said, he didn’t recognsze the strength of his enemies. He says the president may underestimate them too.

“The president is not a representative of the political establishment class,” Mr Scaramucci said. “And so for whatever reason, people have made a decision that they want to eject him.”

“It’s almost like he’s opened up the door now for America’s CEOs and America’s billionaires to enter the Washington political system,” which is prompting a backlash among the Washington establishment.

Anthony Scaramucci after his first television interview since being fired from the White House. Picture: Twitter

Mr Scaramucci also sought to explain the president’s apparent embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin and put-downs of Senate leader Mitch McConnell for Republicans failing to pass health-care legislation. The president was trying to apply business practices to governing, he said.

“I see it as a strong CEO that’s now the American president that’s making counterintuitive decisions that may not be liked by the members of the media, but may be in the best interests of the people of the United States,” he says of the effort to boost ties with Mr Putin.

As for tough words for Senator McConnell: “it’s almost like a football coach talking to one of the players on the team. And the president is a — you know, he can be a tough coach at times. But I’ll tell you what, the Republicans should be very happy that he’s on their team because this guy’s a winner.”

Mr Scaramucci did have one area of disagreement with the president. He says Mr Trump should have been clearer in denouncing white supremacists in Charlottesville. “It’s actually terrorism,” he said. “Whether it’s domestic or international terrorism, with the moral authority of the presidency, you have to call that stuff out.”

Mr Scaramucci suggested that some White House officials are afraid to tell the president he made a mistake by not condemning the white supremacist protesters. He also pointed to the influence of White House adviser Steve Bannon, who Mr Scaramucci memorably called a self-promoter, in the New Yorker interview, using a raunchy phrase.

The Mooch was more restrained on ABC. But he did decry what he called the “Bannon-bart influence,” an apparent reference to Mr Bannon, who before joining the White House ran the right-wing populist website, Breitbart News Network.

Later, in a Facebook Live interview, Mr Scaramucci said he had never asked Mr Bannon whether he was a “white nationalist or a white supremacist,” but he said, “I think the toleration of it by Steve Bannon is inexcusable.”

Scaramucci on if Bannon is a white nationalist: "I don't know...the toleration of it by Steve Bannon is inexcusable" https://t.co/vvtK3QfqBY pic.twitter.com/ilVuZheBP0

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 13, 2017

The White House didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment.

The Wall Street Journal